100 YEARS OF RADIO

(This piece first appeared in the Winter
1994 issue of MusiCaliformula magazine
and is reprinted with the permission of Califormula
Broadcasting)

If this was 1894 instead of 1994, there
would be no radio, no FM stations broadcasting your favorite music, no
cellular and no cordless phones, no microwave ovens, no radar, no television,
no beepers - none of the common things that depend on radio signals to
make them work.

In 1894 no one had heard of "radio"
although there were some scientists around the world who worked in strange,
mysterious laboratories where they made sparks of lightening jump from
one side of the room to the other. They noticed strange things: the sparks
would make their hair stand on end even though they were several feet from
the sparks. Long before then people had noticed the same effects during
thunderstorms. What was the strange power that traveled through the air
from the great sparks of electricity?

In 1886 the German physicist Heinrich
Hertz became the first person to tame these sparks and turn them into
controlled "waves" of electrical energy that traveled invisibly
through the air. Today, the frequency of a radio station is determined
by how many times per second it sends out a wave of energy.

Each one of these cycles of energy is called
a "Hertz." For instance, radio station Jammin
Z-90 in San Diego, California broadcasts at 90.3 million Hertz per
second (megahertz), or as it's often abbreviated "90.3 mHz"

Mr. Hertz knew how to produce radio waves
but he didn't use them to send information, not even such basic information
as the dots and dashes of Morse Code. But, in the summer of 1894, a young
Italian on vacation in the mountains picked up a technical magazine and
read Hertz' story about electrical waves. An idea came to him: if these
electrical waves were more powerful and better controlled then it would
be possible to use them to send signals across space for a considerable
distance! Guglielmo Marconi
was so excited by this idea that he cut short his vacation and rushed home
to begin assembling the kinds of equipment Hertz had used to produce electrical
waves.

Several months before Marconi began his
experiments, a Russian scientist was experimenting with ways to detect
thunderstorms in advance. Was there a way to detect the storm's electrical
energy when it was far away? In coming up with an answer to that question,
Alexander Popoff (also
spelled "Popov") invented what was in effect a radio receiver.
From there he proceeded to put together the world's first system for sending
and receiving wireless electronic communications.

In early 1895, Popoff sent and received
a "wireless" signal across 600 yards. Marconi, who knew nothing
of Popoff's work, soon achieved the same kinds of results. Radio was born.

Marconi gets most of the credit for "inventing
radio," because much of Popoff's work was for the Russian military
and radio communications was such a revolutionary process that the Russians
didn't want to share its obvious advantages with the rest of the world.

By 1906 the air waves became busy with
the clicking sound of coded messages being sent between the ever-growing
network of radio stations on land and at sea. But on Christmas Eve 1906
something different came through the earphones of radio operators from
New England to the Gulf of Mexico: voices. For the first time ever, music
and voice had been broadcast over the radio thanks to the developments
of Canadian-born Reginald Fessenden.

Even though radio stations now had the
ability to transmit music and voice, there were no stations broadcasting
entertainment programming.

In
1916, David Sarnoff, who had started at the Marconi company as a teenager,
suggested development of what he called the "Radio Music Box System."
Instead of the complicated radio receiving apparatus then is use, Sarnoff
recommended putting the equipment in an attractive box for sale to people
who would listen to a new type of radio broadcast featuring concerts, lectures,
sports events and other entertainment.

Sarnoff predicted his idea would generate
$75 million in sales within three years. When World War One ended, the
Radio Corporation of America was founded, and in its first three years
of selling Radio Music Boxes, it sold $83 million worth. Sarnoff went on
the become the head of RCA and what is now the NBC Network.

Sarnoff was brilliant but ruthless. He
tried to kill the development of FM radio. There's no doubt that FM radio
is much better than AM radio, but by the 1930's Sarnoff's RCA and its affiliates
owned thousands of AM radio stations and had sold millions of radio receivers
that could not use the new, superior Frequency Modulation system invented
by Edwin Armstrong.

Armstrong's battles to promote FM radio
nearly killed his spirit, but in 1994 we have to be grateful for his perseverance.
Listen to your favorite music on an AM radio and then on an FM stereo radio.
Thank Armstrong for the difference.

As FM radio very slowly began to emerge
in the 1940's, other visionaries were looking to take radio beyond Earth,
to the heavens.

In a 1946 magazine article, British radio
expert Arthur C. Clarke
proposed bouncing radio waves off of space stations. It sounded like science
fiction! In 1946 there was no way to get anything into outer space, let
alone a radio station .

Clarke proposed putting these space stations
in orbit 22,300 miles above the earth. That way the station would orbit
at the same speed as the Earth and thus stay above the same spot on the
Earth's surface and be available as radio relay station. Radio stations
were already using relay stations on mountain tops in order to help them
broadcast for longer distances.

The first successful radio relay station
in space was the Syncom II built by the electronics and aviation company
put together by Howard
Hughes. It was launched into space in 1965.

Humans have inhabited the Earth for well
over 100,000 years, but it's only for less than 100 of those years that
they have truly been able to communicate with each other on a worldwide
basis.

Because of that, people for the first time
ever are beginning to learn about cultures others than their own, about
the trials and tribulations of other peoples, about their joys and triumphs.

The electronic era has brought us better
communications. Let us continue to learn to use it for better understanding.